The first edition of Browning's poems appeared in two volumes in 1849, a second in three volumes in 1863 and a third in six volumes in 1868. A revised edition containing all the poems was issued in sixteen volumes in 1888-1889. A fine complete edition in two volumes, edited by Augustine Birrell and F.G. Kenyon, was issued in 1896, and Smith, Elder & Co., London, brought out a two-volume edition in 1900. In this country the Riverside edition of Browning's Poetical Works in six volumes, issued by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., and the Camberwell edition in twelve handy volumes, with notes by Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke, published by Crowell, are valuable for Browning students.
The standard life is The Life and Letters of Robert Browning, by Mrs. Sutherland Orr, but valuable are The Love Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, issued by Browning's son in 1899. For Edmund Gosse's Robert Browning—Personalia the poet supplied much of the material in notes. Good short sketches and estimates are Chesterton's Browning in the English Men of Letters series and Waugh's Robert Browning.
GEORGE MEREDITH
The standard edition of Meredith's works is the Boxhill edition in seventeen volumes, with photogravure frontispieces, issued in this country by the Scribners. The same text is used in the Pocket Edition in sixteen volumes, which does not include the unfinished novel, Celt and Saxon. A mass of comment on Meredith may be found in the English and American reviews and magazines, to which Poole's Index furnishes the best guide.
Mrs. M.S. Henderson, George Meredith: Novelist, Poet, Reformer; George Macaulay Trevelyan, The Poetry and Philosophy of George Meredith; John Lane, Biography of George Meredith, and R. Le Gallienne, Characteristics of George Meredith.
STEVENSON
Robert Louis Stevenson's early work appeared in fugitive form in magazines and reviews and even after he had written The New Arabian Nights and Travels With a Donkey he was forced to see such excellent matter as The Silverado Squatters cut up into magazine articles and more than half of it discarded. The vogue of Stevenson was greater in this country than in England until he had fully established his reputation. In 1878 An Inland Voyage appeared and in 1879 Travels With a Donkey, but it was not until 1883 that Treasure Island made him well known. The standard edition of Stevenson is the Thistle edition, beautifully printed and illustrated, and issued at Edinburgh and New York, 1894-1898. The Letters of Stevenson to His Family, originally issued in 1899, have now been incorporated with Vailima Letters and issued in four volumes. They are arranged chronologically, with admirable biographical commentary by Sydney Colvin, to whom a great part of them was written. Stevenson's personality was so attractive that a mass of reminiscence and comment has been produced since his death in 1894. The best books are Graham Balfour, Life of Robert Louis Stevenson; Walter Raleigh, R.L. Stevenson; Simpson, Stevenson's Edinburgh Days, and Memoirs of Vailima, by Isobel Strong and Lloyd Osbourne, the novelist's stepchildren. Henry James in Partial Portraits has a fine appreciation of Stevenson and Robert Louis Stevenson in California, by Katharine D. Osbourne is rich in reminiscence.
THOMAS HARDY
Since 1895, Thomas Hardy has written no fiction. The standard edition of his works is published in this country by the Harpers. Recently this firm has issued Hardy in a convenient thin paper edition which may be slipped into the coat pocket. His first novel, Desperate Remedies, appeared in 1871 but it was not until the issue of Far From the Madding Crowd in 1874 that he gained popular fame. Many magazine articles have been written on the "corner of Dorsetshire" which Hardy calls Wessex. Good books on the Hardy country are The Wessex of Romance, by W. Sherren, and The Wessex of Thomas Hardy, by Windle.